


The Army Way

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 05:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some bawdy military-type humor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Army Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wickedtrue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedtrue/gifts).



"Moving left." 

The hurried schuss of feet skimming over pavement, the fast, almost dainty little steps of soldiers trained in combat.  The world was in greenscale in Lennox's nightvision, a chlorine-green sky, the black squared-edge hulks of buildings in the simulated city street. 

"Right," a voice came over his headset. "Got a roadblock."

"What's it looking like?"

"Ten meters down, car. Hood's up." 

"Handle it."

A click over the comm and Lennox saw two shapes move from behind his right shoulder, gliding down the street, spines hunched over their weapons, which jutted out in front of them like long noses, as they fixed on the hulk in front of them. They'd met no resistance yet, but nothing was craftier than OPFOR, so Lennox crept closer to that mental edge, that sharp anticipation of knowing it's going to kick off any minute.

It didn't matter that it was fake. It didn't matter that it was training.  The edge was always there, the moment when you took the field manuals and threw them out the window. The Army tried to cover everything, but nothing could map out every turn of battle. That required an almost intuitive, bone-deep knowledge of combat, of this waiting rush like a wave cresting overhead and there was only one way to get it. 

He peered at the vehicle, hating how nightvision blurred edges, making everything seem ready to move, fuzzy and instinct as though caught on slow film.

"Kind of stupid, if you ask me," Figueroa's voice on comm, cutting through Lennox's reverie.

"No one asked you, Fig." Epps, chiding.  He was Air Force, and as he liked to joke, 'not made for groundpounding' but he was trying, following the lead of his fire team leader. 

"Yeah, well they should."

"Ask you what?"  There was no point fighting it. Shutting men down didn't help, and besides, it helped him concentrate, in a way, lifting some of the anticipation. Soldiers bantered when they were nervous, when they were on edge, like this, for probably as long as war had existed. 

"Doing urban combat ops?  I'm cool with the house-to-house, but none of those freaky-ass aliens in Mission City was crouched behind a doorframe waiting for us, ya know?" 

"Man has a point," Epps conceded. 

"Yeah, but this is the Army,"  Martin cracked. "Don't you remember? You suspended common sense with your civil rights the moment you raised your right hand."

 

“Too true,” Cordova said. He was the quiet guy, Donnelly’s replacement, too new to really claim his place, yet. 

"Confidence target," Lennox said. The team checking the vehicle signalled an all clear, one pointing that something was up around the corner.  He gave a hand signal, too, and began his own sweeping rush up the cleared street. Confidence targets were standard doctrine: train, do some reinforcement with an easy practice mission, and start drilling the skills into your muscles and reflexes, tied to what the field manuals called 'positive mental associations'.  It read like pop psychology gibberish, even then. 

"Didn't know Uncle Sam cared so much about my self-esteem," Figueroa said. His voice was tighter, picking up the tension, feigning the lightness. A comm net that went dead was always suspicious: if someone was monitoring, you didn't want to give them a clue anything was up. 

“If he cared about my sanity, he’d do something about your snoring,” Epps said. 

They  met up with the fire team at the obstacle, spreading into a firefan perimeter around it. The team leader flicked two fingers down, twice, to the right. Lennox nodded.  Two movements, down to the right.  He nodded, pointing directions to the fire team, keeping his voice light. “Uncle Sam only cares about the sanity of his Army children, you Air Force pogue.”

“Oh, so it’s like that, huh?”

“It’s so very much like that.” Lennox returned.

“It’s tough love, baby,” Figueroa said.

“You two stop flirting?” Lennox said. “Trying to run a smooth op here.” 

“If it were run any smoother it’d be like Epps’s chest. Man, you wax that thing?”

“A man never reveals his beauty secrets,” Epps said, as they moved down the street, fireteams carefully leapfrogging each other.  It was a movie director’s fantasy of sprawl: squat, ugly buildings, the glass shot out from the last teams that trained here, leaving jagged reflective teeth in every windowframe.  It was the typical array of storefronts, with vacant apartments and housing-project grade rickety balconies above, and here and there, the larger metal shutters of what Lennox guessed would be better shops, like the shutters he saw in New York City on vacation once.

“Afraid of the competi--!” 

A roar, seeming to echo all around them, and then the metal shutter of a shop buckled, bursting open, sending the slats spraying like metal tentacles over the street.  The team went down, ducking and covering, the broken slats of metal bouncing off body armor. Cries of ‘Contact!’ competed with the roaring engine, the crash of metal on metal and pavement, and the sudden loud pneumatic pops of the team’s guns. 

The vehicle cornered, hard, headlights flaring on and cutting a blade of blinding light over the unit as the tires spat gravel, getting traction.  White chalk burst on its side, as the target rounds from the team’s guns landed along its sides, sending flowers of dust where they hit the spinning  tires.

The black SUV roared down the street, suddenly erupting from within, metal parts sliding over metal, hydraulics hissing, and one arm swinging around to fire a spray of a chain gun at the team as he spun, rolling back to hit the ground, tires spinning, in his vehicle mode, tearing off into the darkness.  

Lennox’s heart was racing. There was something about combat, as an officer, even when it was just training, that brought some stepchild of panic and exhilaration: the pride of his men, working beautifully as a team, all the drilling, all the training, taking over; and worry that one of them could get hurt. Or worse. 

But they stayed still, in place, no one haring off to try to be a hero, as the vehicle left, still popping covering rounds at the disappearing taillights.

“Check!”

A chorus of ‘okay’ ran down the ragged line, until it hit Fig. “Yeah. Hit.” Figueroa did not sound happy. “Figures. That’s what I get for saying they don’t hide behind doors.”

“Hit?” Lennox turned to look.  Figueroa was elbowing himself off the ground, one hand tangled in his guns harness, a white splat of chalk from one of Ironhide’s larger rounds bright on his upper thigh. 

“Shut up.” His voice sounded wheezy and thin. “I’m fine.” 

“Don’t look so fine,” Epps said.

“Hey,” Fig snapped, rolling to his kneepads. “Big target, okay?”

“Yeah, making dick jokes? He’s all right,” Lennox said.  He switched channels on his comm. “Not sure if you heard that, but contact.”

“I heard. And Ironhide is en route.”  Optimus’s voice was so deep it almost fuzzed over the radio channel. 

“Think we got him pretty good, Optimus.”

“Judging by his language, I would have to agree with your assessment.”  There was a glimmer of amusement in under the stiff, formal words.  “He is—grudgingly—impressed by your performance.”

“Yeah?” It was a compliment, however gruff: Ironhide had been fighting for millions of years, if Lennox understood it right. To be told they were any good after just a few weeks? Felt real good. 

“However, he says that it is only fair that you would assist in washing off the marks.” 

“Yeah. We could do that.”

“Do what?” Epps said. “This better not be more crazy Army shit.”

“’Hide wants us to give him a bath after all the shooting we did,” Lennox reported.

“Fair enough, I guess. Though tell him next time he wants women in bikinis.”

“Hey!” Figueroa said. “Don’t hear you guys offering that to me!”

“Yeah, all right, Figs. We’ll hose you down, too.”

“…I meant the women in bikinis part,” Figueroa said, with a huff.

Epps and Lennox exchanged an eyerolling glance, amused. They both had wives, families, but they remembered how it was to be young, single and on the prowl. “Tell you what,” Lennox said. “I’ll radio ahead and make sure they got a cute nurse at the aid station.”

“Don’t forget to tell her I was wounded in action,” Figueroa said. “By an alien.” 

“It was practice,” Cordova said.

“Yeah? Tell that to my—“

“Hey now,” Epps cut him off. “Language, son. Remember. Ambassador to an alien species and all that. Gotta keep it clean.”

“Keep it clean,” Figueroa muttered, and the gesture he threw at Epps was anything but.

“All right,” Lennox stepped up, cutting them both off. Jokes could go too far, especially with Figs. “Form up and let’s move out.” 

“Hunh,” Martin grumbled, as they retook their fireteams. “Figures.  Contact with an alien, superpowerful race, and the Army? Still gets to hump it on foot.”

“That’s the Army way,” Lennox said. “But hey, it works.”

 

 

 


End file.
